Posted tagged ‘Islamists and the media’

Even if the Canadian branch of Islamic Relief claims not to have directly funded these Hamas groups, its own accounts reveal grants of millions of dollars to its parent organization, Islamic Relief Worldwide, which oversees the movement of money to a number of Hamas fronts.

Islamic Relief branches also receive money from several terror-linked Middle Eastern charities, including those established by Sheikh al Zindani, whom the US government has designated a “Global Terrorist.”

Islamic Relief did not much care for the exposé. Reyhana Patel, a senior figure at its Canadian branch, first persuaded the Post to bowdlerize the article by removing some of the sourced material and adding sentences in defense of Islamic Relief.

On May 20, a Muslim cleric, Nouman Ali Khan spoke at a fundraising event in Toronto for Islamic Relief, one of the largest Muslim charities in the world.

Khan preaches that prostitutes and pornographic actors are “filth” and that “you have to punish them … They’re not killed; they’re whipped. And they’re whipped a hundred times.” Khan has also declared that God gives men “license” to beat unfaithful wives, and that Muslim women are committing a “crime” if they object to the religious text that he says permits this abuse.

Muslim cleric Nouman Ali Khan says that God gives men “license” to beat unfaithful wives, and that Muslim women are committing a “crime” if they object to the religious text that he says permits this abuse. (Image source: Rossi101/Wikimedia Commons)

Before the event took place, this author had written about Khan and Islamic Relief in the National Post, with the help of colleagues at the Middle East Forum.

Islamic Relief did not much care for the exposé. Reyhana Patel, a senior figure at its Canadian branch, first persuaded the Post to bowdlerize the article by removing some of the sourced material and adding sentences in defense of Islamic Relief.

Patel then published in the Post a response that denounced our research as “false… one-sided and unsubstantiated.”

Really? In a rather major failing, she failed even to address Nouman Ali Khan’s presence at the Islamic Relief event.

Instead, she boasted of her own humanitarian goodness and attacked the Middle East Forum (MEF) as an “anti-Muslim think tank” that “uses some of its resources to paint a negative picture of Islam and Muslims.” MEF has always, in fact, argued the very opposite. It believes that if radical Islam is the problem, then moderate Islam is the solution. This very maxim can be found in dozens of articles on its website. MEF supports a number of moderate Muslim groups working to challenge extremism, and encourages others to do the same.

It is old habit of Islamists to accuse anti-Islamist activists of being anti-Muslim, because it allows them misleadingly to conflate Islam and Islamism. That obfuscation severely inhibits the work of moderate Muslims trying to free their faith from the grip of these extremists.

Patel’s only reference to the charges of Middle East Forum, in fact, appears to be a deliberate misquote. She writes that MEF “labelled Islamic Relief Canada a ‘terrorist organization which regularly gives platforms to preachers who incite hatred against women, Jews, homosexuals and Muslim minorities.'” Islamic Relief does indeed regularly give platforms to such preachers — Nouman Ali Khan is just one example in the weekly pattern of this charity and its branches across the world.

But MEF did not claim that Islamic Relief was a “terrorist organization.” I wrote that it was “financially linked with a number of terrorist groups.” Islamic Relief branches have, for example, indeed given money to several groups in Gaza linked to the designated terrorist group Hamas. These include the Al Falah Benevolent Society, which the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Centre describes as one of “Hamas’s charitable societies.” And even if the Canadian branch of Islamic Relief claims not to have directly funded these Hamas groups, its own accounts reveal grants of millions of dollars to its parent organization, Islamic Relief Worldwide, which oversees the movement of money to a number of Hamas fronts.

Islamic Relief branches also receives money from several terror-linked Middle Eastern charities, including those established by Sheikh al Zindani, whom the US government has designated a “Global Terrorist.”

Although MEF believes that Islamic Relief is financially linked to terror, no one wrote that the charity itself is a terrorist organization. Others, however, are less circumspect. In 2014, the United Arab Emirates designated Islamic Relief as a terrorist organization. And in 2016, the banking giant HSBC shut down Islamic Relief’s bank accounts in the United Kingdom “amid concerns that cash for aid could end up with terrorist groups abroad.”

Perhaps Reyhana Patel hoped that by smearing the Middle East Forum, and telling her readers about her love of “diversity … tolerance and inclusion,” she could sell Islamic Relief as a force for good. The charity’s regular promotion of hate preachers and financial links to terrorist groups, however, says otherwise.

And is Patel herself really so dedicated to supporting peace and tolerance? Her social media posts and a short-lived career as a journalist suggest not. Patel has a history, it seems, of attacking organizations that oppose religious extremism. In 2014, Patel wrote an article condemning Student Rights, a British organization that works to expose homophobia, racism and other forms of extremism on campus. Without seriously addressing the group’s research, Patel described the organization as “sensationalist and misleading.” Sound familiar?

Patel has also defended gender-segregation imposed by Muslim student groups at Britain’s public universities, and then complained that Muslim women who oppose this misogynistic behavior “seem to want to discredit and deamonise [sic] me.”

Further, Patel has expressed praise for Malia Bouattia, a prominent student activist in Britain whose anti-Semitism was the subject of national media coverage. In 2011, Bouattia condemned a university with a large Jewish population as a “Zionist outpost.” In 2014, she opposed a motion at a student conference that condemned ISIS on the grounds that such condemnation was “Islamophobic.” That same year, a British parliamentary report concluded that Bouattia was guilty of “outright racism.”

If this is the company Reyhana Patel keeps, then perhaps Nouman Ali Khan’s extremism is a perfect fit for Islamic Relief Canada.

Islamic Relief was designated a terrorist organization by a pious Muslim country. Western banks have closed its accounts over terrorism concerns, and, just last month, Britain’s Charity Commission starting investigating the charity for hosting a preacher who justifies killing homosexuals.

The Islamic Relief franchise is a charitable front for extremism in the West. That it has managed to build a favorable reputation is testament to the careful doublespeak of its officials. Such duplicity should not be tolerated.

Samuel Westrop is the Director of Islamist Watch, a project of the Middle East Forum.

The point of this essay is to puncture the West’s Politically Correct meme, an ideologically-useful fiction according to which Muslims are always victims and Christians are victimizers—or, at the very least, are never victimized.

The painful reality is that, globally speaking, when it comes to the topic of religious persecution, the adherents of Islam are the biggest persecutors while those of Christianity are victimized more so than the members of any other religious faith.

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Jeremy Joseph Christian is a 35 year-old white man who, according to some press reports, is also a “white supremacist.”

Christian, you see, while aboard a train in Portland, Oregon, allegedly hurled “ethnic and religious” slurs at two young women who, evidently, appeared to have been Muslim. “Get off the bus and get out of the country because you don’t pay taxes here,” Christian is reported to have said. He also, supposedly, expressed a dislike for Muslims and characterized them as “criminals.”

Three men who are now being hailed as “heroes” intervened. Christian killed two of them, slashing their throats. The third man was stabbed as well, but survived and is being treated for non-life threatening injuries.

There is much to this story that is still unclear (more will be written at a future time). Predictably, the Islamic activists of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) spared not a moment to exploit this tragedy for their partisan purposes. CAIR’s National Executive Director, Nihad Awad, expressly implicated President Trump: “President Trump must speak out personally against the rising tide of Islamophobia and other forms of bigotry and racism in our nation that he has provoked through his numerous statements, policies and appointments that have negatively impacted minority communities.”

Awad’s remarks are not only fundamentally untrue. For more than one reason, they are profoundly offensive.

One reason that they are offensive is that Muslims, far from being the most persecuted of religious groups in today’s world, are in reality the biggest persecutors.

The reality is that if there is a “rising tide” of any species of violent bigotry, it is Christophobia, not Islamophobia. No religion is as persecuted around the planet as that of Christianity.

In February, the Center for Studies on New Religions released a study showing that last year, 90,000 Christians throughout the world were murdered because of their faith. Nearly one-third of these victims were killed by Muslims. According to Open Doors, an advocacy organization for persecuted Christians, 14 of the 20 worst purveyors of Christian persecution are Islamic countries, and the latter constitute 35 of the worst 50.

Middle Eastern wars in places like Yemen, Syria, and Iraq have been particularly hard on the ancient Christian communities that exist among the Islamic majorities. Legions of men, women, and children have been slaughtered, maimed, and/or displaced.

Yet the world utters virtually a peep. Pope Francis, for example, the Pope of my church, while he has indeed commented here and there on the oppression of Christians, he may as well have said nothing, for the Pope’s remarks on this matter have been like whispers relative to the pleas that he makes incessantly on behalf of Islamic refugees.

And while the leftist media in the West seeks to establish a connection between the beginning of Ramadan and Jeremy Christian’s insulting of two Islamic women, over in Egypt some Muslims inaugurated the holy month by…slaughtering dozens of Christian men, women, and children.

The most recent outrage committed against Christians occurred on May 26 in Egypt. Islamic terrorists attacked a bus full of Coptic Christians, murdering 28 and injuring many more. Children were among the victims.

The victims were reportedly heading to St. Samuel the Confessor monastery when their bus was blocked by three vehicles and eight to ten assailants wearing military uniforms and masks. The attackers proceeded to blast gunfire into the bus.

The so-called “Islamic State” (ISIS) claimed “credit” for the bloodbath.

In what now reads as ominously as it does presciently, an article published but two days before this attack at the website of Open Doors and authored by one of its Egyptian staff members speaks to the fever-pitch anxieties that the impending Islamic holiday of Ramadan have induced in the members of Egypt’s Christian community. It is worth reading “Janelle P” in her own words:

“As much excitement as the Islamic holy month brings to Muslims, it does carry a great deal of burdens and concerns to the Christian community in Egypt. It is a very long 30 days during which Christians in schools, work or public spaces will receive harsh looks and verbal harassments from devout Muslims because of their faith. They are ridiculed for not fasting like Muslims. Even in some cases, Christians may face physical violence due to the fact that they were caught eating their lunch by their fasting Muslim coworkers or neighbors!”

Think about this: Due to the celebration of an Islamic holiday, Christians have to brave insults, hostility, and even physical violence.

Janelle P continues:

“It’s not uncommon for Christians to hide somewhere to eat their lunches away from the eyes of the Muslims.” Janelle recalls his own experiences growing up in Egypt. “I remember as a young boy having to eat and drink in the school toilet to avoid trouble with Muslim classmates and teachers.”

Young Christian children must take shelter in school restrooms if they want to eat their lunch unmolested by their Islamic classmates.

“It’s almost protocol during the month of Ramadan for devout Muslims, wherever they are, to turn to the Christians around them and bombard them with intimidating questions about their faith. They aim to distract themselves from the long fasting hours and, if they’re lucky enough, to plant doubt in the hearts of the Christians.”

Janelle P concludes by acknowledging that “We, the Christians of Egypt, feel many different emotions regarding Ramadan.” However, he presumably speaks for his coreligionists in Egypt when Janelle expresses, not rage or hatred, but rather faith that God will show Muslims the error of their ways and bring them to Him. It is this, at any rate, for which they pray.

The attitude of love that the most oppressed Christians hold toward their Islamic oppressors stands in glaring contrast to that which Muslims have toward those who do not share their vision.

Of course, the point here is not to suggest that all of the world’s billion or so Muslims deserve to be condemned for the actions of the exploitative, oppressive, and murderous among them. Such a suggestion is unwarranted. Nor it would be right to suggest that no Muslims experience persecution. There are indeed persecuted Muslims throughout the world, but the persecution that they suffer is almost without exception at the hands of other Muslims.

The point of this essay is to puncture the West’s Politically Correct meme, an ideologically-useful fiction according to which Muslims are always victims and Christians are victimizers—or, at the very least, are never victimized.

The painful reality is that, globally speaking, when it comes to the topic of religious persecution, the adherents of Islam are the biggest persecutors while those of Christianity are victimized more so than the members of any other religious faith.

After hearing of the Manchester terrorist attack, politicians once more communicated their by now old-routine of “shock” and “grief” at the predictable outcome of their own policies.

Most dumbfounding of all, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said that she was watching the developments in Manchester “with grief and horror” and that she found the attack “incomprehensible”.

Every time a European leader publicly endorses Islam as a great faith, a “religion of peace”, or claims that violence in Islam is a “perversion of a great faith”, despite massive evidence to the contrary, they signal in the strongest way possible that with every devastating attack, the West is ripe for the taking.

When ISIS attacked the Bataclan Theater in Paris in November 2015, it did so because, in its own words, it was “where hundreds of pagans gathered for a concert of prostitution and vice.” A year earlier, ISIS had forbidden all music as haram (forbidden). Many Islamic scholars support the idea that Islam forbids the ‘sinful’ music of the West.

It should, therefore, not be a surprise to anybody that Islamic terrorists might target a concert by the American pop singer Ariana Grande in Manchester on May 22. In addition, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security warned last September that terrorists are focused on concerts, sporting events and outdoor gatherings because such venues “often pursue simple, achievable attacks with an emphasis on economic impact and mass casualties”.

Islamic State claimed responsibility for the Manchester suicide bombing, in which a device laced with screws and bolts was detonated. Twenty-two people, children and adults, were murdered in the explosion that ripped through the Manchester concert area; more than 50 people were wounded. While the media is describing the use of nail bombs at the concert hall as a new and surprising tactic, it is in fact an extremely old one, practiced by Arab terrorists on Israelis for decades.

MANCHESTER, ENGLAND – MAY 23: A police officer stands guard close to the Manchester Arena on May 23, 2017 in Manchester, England. (Photo by Dave Thompson/Getty Images)

Nevertheless, after hearing of the Manchester terrorist attack, politicians once more communicated their by now old-routine of “shock” and “grief” at the predictable outcome of their own policies. The usual platitudes of “thoughts and hearts” being with the victims of the attack, accompanied professed shock.

President of the European Council Donald Tusk, tweeted: “My heart is in Manchester this night. Our thoughts are with the victims.” Leader of the British Liberal Democrats, Tim Farron, condemned the “shocking and horrific” attack. British Home Secretary Amber Rudd said it was a “tragic incident”, while Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn called it a “terrible incident”. Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said his citizens were “shocked by the news of the horrific attack in Manchester tonight”. Most dumbfounding of all, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said that she was watching the developments in Manchester “with grief and horror” and that she found the attack “incomprehensible”.

After 9/11 in the United States; the 2004 Madrid train bombings, which killed nearly 200 and wounded 2000; the 2005 attacks on London’s transit system where 56 people were killed and 700 wounded; the 2015 attacks in Paris, where ISIS killed 130 people and wounded nearly 400; the March 2016 attacks on the Brussels airport and metro station, where 31 people were killed and 300 wounded; the July 2016 attack in Nice, where 86 people, including ten children, were killed and more than 200 people wounded; the December 2016 attack in Berlin, where 12 people were killed and almost 50 wounded; the March 2017 attack on Westminster that killed three people and wounded more than 20; the April 2017 attack in Stockholm, where 5 people were killed, including one 11-year-old girl; let alone countless attacks in Israel, Western leaders have run out of all conceivable excuses to be shocked and surprised at Islamic terrorism occurring in their cities at ever-increasing frequency.

All the above-mentioned attacks are just the spectacular ones. There have been innumerable others, sometimes at the rate of several attacks per month, which barely made the headlines, such as the Muslim man who, a little over a month ago, tortured and stabbed a 66-year-old Jewish woman in Paris and then, while shouting “Allahu Akbar”, threw her out of the window; or the Paris airport attacker in March, who came “to die for Allah” and accomplished his goal without, miraculously, taking any innocent bystanders with him,

After the last spectacular terrorist atrocity in the UK, which aimed at the very heart of European democratic civilization by targeting the Houses of Parliament and Westminster Bridge, British PM Theresa May said: “It is wrong to describe this as Islamic terrorism. It is Islamist terrorism and the perversion of a great faith”.

It is impossible to fight back against that which you refuse to understand or acknowledge, but then again, European leaders seem to have no intention of fighting back, as they have evidently chosen an entirely different tactic, namely that of appeasement.

Every time a European leader publicly endorses Islam as a great faith, a “religion of peace”, or claims that violence in Islam is a “perversion of a great faith”, despite massive evidence to the contrary — the actual violent contents of the Quran and the hadiths, which include repeated exhortations to fight the “infidels” — they signal in the strongest way possible to organizations such as ISIS, Al Qaeda, Boko Haram, Hezbollah and Hamas, that with every devastating attack, the West is ripe for the taking. The terror organizations and their supporters see European leaders’ immense fear of causing even the slightest offense, despite protestations to the contrary from leaders such as Theresa May.

The fear is accompanied by a persistent resolve to pretend, at whatever cost — even that of the lives of their citizens — that Europe is not at war, even though it is blindingly clear that others are at war with it.

These terrorist organizations perceive that when ministers in countries such as Sweden, where according to news reports, 150 ISIS fighters have returned and are apparently walking around freely, propose the integration of Islamic State jihadists back into Swedish society — as a solution to terrorism! — it will not take much more effort to make these leaders submit completely, as Sweden almost certainly has. This “solution” can only work on terrorists as encouragement to carry out even more terrorism — as is overwhelmingly evident from the increasing frequency of terrorist attacks on European soil.

While European politicians, incredibly, believe that their tactics are preventing terrorism, they are in fact empowering it as much as possible: Terrorists do not react to heartfelt sympathy, teddy bears and candlelit vigils. If anything, it arguably makes them even more disgusted with Western society, which they want to transform into a caliphate under Islamic sharia law.

Politicians seem to lose sight all the time of the Islamist goal of the caliphate. Islamic terrorism is not “mindless violence” but clearly calculated terror to force the eventual submission of the targeted society. So far, with the West inert and in denial, the terrorists seem to be winning.

(This is similar to what Muslim reformers, also known as “Islamophobes”, such as Dr. Zuhdi Jasser and the Clarion Project, which also promotes reform, have been saying. The stats were presented by Clarion Project several years ago. A Muslim reformation will be difficult, will take a long time — so did the Christian reformation — and may not happen. For America, however, I see no alternative for the reasons stated here. — DM)

“Sweden needs to be a safe space for refugees… It is time to realize that the new Swedes will claim their space. And bring their culture, language and habits. It is time to see this as a positive force… Something new — The New Country”. — Video advertisement; last sentence spoken by a young woman in a hijab.

Formal membership with a card and yearly subscription would probably not be the modus operandi of an organization working fundamentally to undermine societies in order to remake them in the image of Islam.

The Muslim Brotherhood is an organization the goal of which is to obtain an Islamic state, a caliphate, ruled by sharia — and to bring about that state — if necessary, by jihad.

It is an organization the Egyptian branch of which called for jihad as recently as 2015, thus belying claims that the Muslim Brotherhood is ‘peaceful’. As the murderous actions of Hamas, a Muslim Brotherhood organization, clearly show, it is not.

A recent report has revealed that the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) is well established in Sweden. The report — written at the behest of the Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency and commissioned precisely because of a lack of research on the MB in Sweden — caused an outcry against the authors. Twenty Swedish academics, who specialize in Islam and Muslims, protested the report[1]. They called it “substandard work”, which did not take account of “the extensive research available about Islam and Muslims in Sweden”.

According to the report, the MB has been operating in Sweden since the late 1970s in the guise of a number of Muslim-Swedish organizations, all centered around the Islamic Association in Sweden (IFIS), which itself was established in the mid-1990s as an organizational front for the MB.

IFIS has founded other organizations in Sweden, among which are Islamic Relief, Ibn Rush, and Sweden Young Muslims (SUM). These have not only given the MB a dominant position within so-called ‘Muslim civil society’ in Sweden, but also enabled it to amass considerable Swedish taxpayer funds that have helped consolidate its position.

The authors of the report conclude that the MB’s activists are “building a parallel social structure, which poses a long-term challenge in terms of Sweden’s future social cohesion”. The authors are being most diplomatic.

According to the report, the Muslim Brotherhood in Sweden promotes:

“…a system of ‘cultural pluralism’, where every minority group is on the same level as the majority group… The ideal is… that Sweden should be organized in different ‘groups’, each group having the right to practice its particular values. The Swedish population should, even though it is in the majority, be a group among other groups: all groups should have the same status”.

The prevalent idea of multiculturalism, and the accompanying identity politics, thus play directly into the hands of the MB. A video ad from a charity backed by the Swedish government constitutes a particularly blunt example of this kind of thinking. In it, Swedes are told,

“Sweden will never be what it once was. Sweden needs to be a safe space for refugees… It is time to realize that the New Swedes will claim their space. And bring their culture, language and habits. It is time to see this as a positive force… It is time to create a country together that is proud, inclusive and sustainable. Something new — The New Country”.

The last sentence is spoken by a young woman in a hijab.

There seems no reason for the hysterics among Swedish academics that the report appears to have provoked. In fact, they could easily fact-check the report simply by checking the website of the primary group mentioned in the report, the Islamic Association in Sweden (IFSI), which clearly states (at the bottom of the linked page) that it is a member of the Federation of Islamic Organisations in Europe (FIOE), generallyacknowledged as an umbrella organization for local Muslim Brotherhood organizations from all over Europe.

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal in 2005, then-president of FIOE, Ahmet al-Rawi, said, when asked about ties with the MB, “We are interlinked with them with a common point of view. We have a good close relationship.”

If Swedish academics purporting to study Islam actually followed news from the Middle East, they would also know that Egypt’s former president, Mohamed Morsi, of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party, when he became president of Egypt in 2012, included secretary general of the FIOE, Ayman Ali, on his presidential advisory board.

Not even Swedish academics should need further ’empirical’ proof to see that the Islamic Association in Sweden’s membership of FIOE constitutes de facto allegiance to the Muslim Brotherhood. What Swedish academics are evidently ignorant of, however, is that the MB deliberately operates in a secretive manner. The UK government’s experts, in their own review of the MB, published in December 2015, wrote that “from its foundation the Muslim Brotherhood organised itself into a secretive ‘cell’ structure…This clandestine, centralised and hierarchical structure persists to this day”.

That deliberately opaque and secretive way of operating appears intended to create precisely the confusion and ignorance on the topic, evidently enfolding those academics who ought to know most about this topic. The obfuscation also makes it hard for authorities to crack down on the MB. As Mohammed Akif, the former General Guide and supreme leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, and a former head of its Islamic Center of Munich, explained about the MB in an interview in 2005:

“We do not have an international organization; we have an organization through our perception of things. We are present in every country. Everywhere there are people who believe in the message of the Muslim Brothers. In France, the Union of Islamic Organizations of France (UOIF) does not belong to the organization of the Brothers. They follow their own laws and rules. There are many organizations that do not belong to the Muslim Brothers. For example, Shaykh al-Qaradawi. He is not a Muslim Brother, but he was formed according to the doctrine of the Brothers”.

Formal membership with a card and a yearly subscription, Swedish-style, would probably not be the modus operandi of an organization working fundamentally to undermine societies in order to remake them in the image of Islam — as tidy as that would ’empirically’ make matters for Swedish academics.

The Swedish mainstream society would be wise to take this preliminary report extremely seriously, and not discard it. The Muslim Brotherhood is an organization the goal of which is to obtain an Islamic state, a caliphate, ruled by sharia — and to bring about that state — if necessary, by jihad. It is an organization the Egyptian branch of which called for jihad as recently as 2015, thus belying claims that the Muslim Brotherhood is ‘peaceful’. As the murderous actions of Hamas, a Muslim Brotherhood organization, clearly show, it is not.

Historically, the Muslim Brotherhood has spawned other terrorist organizations, such as Al Qaeda — which, in turn, has spawned ISIS.

The Swedish headlines in March have been filled with news about the return of 150 ISIS fighters to Sweden. A Swedish minister has already said that they should be “integrated back into society”.

The Swedes would do well to pay attention to the influence of extremist groups, such as the Muslim Brotherhood, or the long-term result might not be what many Swedes would like.

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[1] The report was commissioned by the Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency, a state authority, as a preliminary feasibility study, gauging the Muslim Brotherhood’s influence in Sweden before engaging in further study and research.

“I absolutely agree, and it is wrong to describe this as ‘Islamic terrorism’,” she [Prime Minister Theresa May] replied. “It is ‘Islamist terrorism.'”

Clever of her. She did not dismiss the attack as “violent extremism.” She did not suggest that the attacker might just as easily have been a Rastafarian, Zoroastrian or Buddhist. She tacitly recognized that ideologies based on Islamic scripture drive such terrorist attacks while avoiding the implication that most Muslims approve of such ideologies.

This nuanced explanation should have become the norm long ago. Instead, many on the left insist that Islam is simply and only a “religion of peace.” Muslims who contradict that are “perverting” Islam. Non-Muslims who contradict that are Islamophobes.

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“The kafir’s blood is halal for you, so shed it.” That’s just one of the catchier headlines in a recent issue of Rumiyah, a slick online magazine published by the Islamic State group.

A “kafir,” of course, is a non-Muslim. “Halal” means religiously permissible. As for Rumiyah, that’s Arabic for Rome, one of the Christian capitals that the leaders of Islamic State hope to conquer. (The other great Christian capital, Constantinople, fell to soldiers of the caliphate in 1453. It’s now called Istanbul.)

Was Khalid Masood — the convert to Islam who last week staged a terrorist attack at London’s Houses of Parliament, seat and symbol of British democracy — a reader of Rumiyah? If so, he might have been inspired by an article late last year urging people like him to do precisely what he did: drive a vehicle into a crowd of non-Muslims, “smashing their bodies with the vehicle’s strong outer frame while advancing forward — crushing their heads, torsos, and limbs under the vehicle’s wheels and chassis.” Masood then exited the vehicle and stabbed a police officer — a tactic used frequently against Israelis in recent years.

The Western response to such atrocities has become ritualistic. The police say they are investigating and are uncertain about the perpetrator’s motive. Foreign heads of state condemn the attack, offer condolences and pledge solidarity. Leaders of the nation attacked defiantly announce that life will go on and no one will be intimidated.

Next, comes the debate over whether Islam should be implicated or vindicated. In this instance, a conservative MP, Michael Tomlinson, asked Prime Minister Theresa May whether she agreed that the term “Islamic terror” was inappropriate.

“I absolutely agree, and it is wrong to describe this as ‘Islamic terrorism’,” she replied. “It is ‘Islamist terrorism.'”

Clever of her. She did not dismiss the attack as “violent extremism.” She did not suggest that the attacker might just as easily have been a Rastafarian, Zoroastrian or Buddhist. She tacitly recognized that ideologies based on Islamic scripture drive such terrorist attacks while avoiding the implication that most Muslims approve of such ideologies.

This nuanced explanation should have become the norm long ago. Instead, many on the left insist that Islam is simply and only a “religion of peace.” Muslims who contradict that are “perverting” Islam. Non-Muslims who contradict that are Islamophobes.

Meanwhile, many on the right believe it is only the Islamists who are practicing “true” Islam. They implicitly concur with the Islamists that 21st century Sufis, Ismailis and Ahmadis are heretics, as are Jordan’s King Abdullah II and Egypt’s President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi (both have gone to war against Islamists) and the millions of Kurds who reject Islamism because they recognize the existential threat it poses to their proud nation.

Islamism is not a complicated ideology. Hassan al-Banna, who founded the Muslim Brotherhood in 1928, wrote: “It is the nature of Islam to dominate, not to be dominated, to impose its law on all nations and to extend its power to the entire planet.” Among the mottoes of the Muslim Brotherhood: “Jihad is our way; death for the sake of Allah is our wish.”

Some Islamists believe the path to power can be cleared only with the sword. We may call them jihadists. Some Islamists see other routes, for example through the ballot box or demographic change. Some Islamists even claim to eschew violence. But to infer from that they embrace nonviolence as a principle would be a mistake.

All Islamists, even those who are clean-shaven and wear neckties, are committed to the supremacy of their religion and their community, the umma, the “nation of Islam,” over all other religions, communities and nations.

No one would argue that when we condemn “white supremacism” we risk offending all people of pallor. So why is it “politically incorrect” to speak candidly — and condemn unequivocally — Islamic supremacism?

Another fact often avoided: Islamists can be Shia as well as Sunni. The earliest Islamist attacks against Americans (the Barbary pirates notwithstanding) were carried out in 1983 in Beirut, first against the U.S. Embassy, then against the barracks of the U.S. Marines who were there to serve as peacekeepers. Most analysts agree that Hezbollah, a Shia organization funded and instructed by the Islamic Republic of Iran, was responsible.

Neither Hezbollah nor Iran’s rulers have become more moderate over the decades since. Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei sees himself as leading a global jihadist revolution against the United States and the liberal world order. The significance of this appears to have eluded many policymakers.

How, for example, did President Barack Obama not understand that the deal he cut with Iran’s rulers will establish them as legitimate members of the nuclear weapons club within less than a generation — even if “Death to America!” remains their goal and rallying cry? And does U.S. President Donald Trump grasp that if the defeat of the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq further empowers Tehran, the American victory will be Pyrrhic?

Sunni and Shia Islamists are rivals — not enemies. Neither would take issue with the unnamed author of the Rumiyah article noted above who asserts that “striking terror into the hearts of all disbelievers is a Muslim’s duty.”

Whether that view is based on true Islam or a perversion of Islam really doesn’t matter. Either way, it’s an expression of the most dynamic and lethal ideologies now spreading around the world. We need to more seriously study these ideologies. We need to more candidly discuss what Islamists intend to do to those who refuse to embrace or appease them. Only then can we hope to formulate a coherent and effective strategy to defend ourselves.

In September 2015, the Center for Security Policy (CSP) publishedStar Spangled Shariah: The Rise of America’s First Muslim Brotherhood Party. Warnings issued then have since been confirmed, specifically, that the United States Council of Muslim Organizations (USCMO), while deceptively cloaked in red, white, and blue, is simply the leading edge of the Islamic Movement in this country. In pursuit of Civilization Jihad, the Muslim Brotherhood’s information operations – including many tactics learned directly from the KGB – have enabled this organization to insinuate itself gradually into a position from which it can assault the pillars of our society. These include: academia, the U.S. judicial system, faith groups, all levels of government, the media, intelligence and security agencies, and our refugee resettlement and other immigration processes. As will be shown here, a development not new but recently uncovered reveals that USCMO Secretary General Ousamma Jammal is directly connected to Saul Alinsky’s Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF), a Marxist-Leninist organization dedicated to revolution in America.

In his Brotherhood/USCMO leadership role, Jammal has a well-established track record of political activism and success at developing strategic relationships for the benefit of the Muslim Brotherhood including with members of the U.S. government. In the ‘About Us’ section on the USCMO website, the third prong of the USCMO Mission Statementdeclares the necessity “to create and sustain an urgent, collective sense of direction that well-serves the American Muslim community toward the betterment and guidance of our nation.” What the USCMO fails to share with the American people is the USCMO’s commitment to the establishment of Islamic Law (shariah) in place of the U.S. Constitution.

It’s long been known that the USCMO is openly allied with far-left racist and revolutionary movements like Black Lives Matter. Recall that, in March 2016, the Center released a videowhich highlighted the statements of Muslim Brotherhood leaders that should be chilling to Americans who cherish the Constitution and oppose the expansion of shariah. That video showed top USCMO leadership figure, Nihad Awad (also the Executive Director of HAMAS USA dba the Council on American Islamic Relations or CAIR), explicitly aligning the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood with the Black Lives Matter movement. The Muslim Brotherhood alignment with the overall Red-Green Axis demonstrates the genuine aims of jihadis in suits: undermining the U.S. Constitution and national security through the global Islamic Movement.

The Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD) is the grant making vehicle of the USCCB. It was founded in Chicago in 1969 with the help of radical organizer Saul Alinsky specifically to fund Alinsky’s Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF).

CCHD has been a radical leftist funding vehicle ever since, giving millions to ACORN, the radical training school, Midwest Academy and others. IAF receives the largest percentage of CCHD grants of any CCHD grantee.

In a Metro Industrial Areas Foundation action memo dated 20 November 2016 and published by member organization ‘Dupage United’ on 9 December 2016, USCMO Secretary General Oussama Jammal is listed among the leadership. The …And Take Counsel section on the USCMO website states, “When we speak with one clear, communal voice, our advice can help true the direction of American society toward justice.” It must be understood, however that within Islam, the word ‘justice’ means ‘shariah’ and only shariah. Thus, the Muslim Brotherhood version of social justice is not intended as benevolence towards non-Muslims; quite to the contrary. Rather, in true Saul Alinsky form, the aim of the Red-Green Axis is anarchy intended to collapse the U.S. system of Constitutional law and order.

Jammal is fully cognizant that the Muslim Brotherhood’s manipulation of progressive leftist social justice entities aligned with the Red-Green Axis is strategic for the advancement of the settlement process. The Muslim Brotherhood has both co-opted the interfaith religious dialogue movement and mastered the operational mechanics of the political process in the U.S. to advance Islam’s shariah objectives. That Jammal works so closely with IAF leadership should be a red flag warning and belies what the USCMO shares with non-Muslims when it says: “Our well-deliberated and sincerely expressed words for the benefit of the nation can fortify attitudes that propagate harmony between people and institutionalize policies that spread prosperity to all.”

This revelation, that the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood works directly with the Marxist-Leninist Alinsky-founded IAF at the highest levels, lends yet additional substance to the overall Red-Green Axis, whose seemingly disparate elements nevertheless have been collaborating to bring down this Republic for some time. Forthcoming CSP publications will delve even further into the Brotherhood-IAF connection.